The Daily Telegraph Sunday 22 February 1998
ANC GUERRILLAS TURN TO CRIME
By Alec Russell in Johannesburg
In a nightmare for post-apartheid South Africa, former African
National Congress guerrillas have become disillusioned with their political
masters and turned to crime.
With a demoralised and corrupt police and a limitless supply of
weapons from the region's many recent wars, President Mandela's society
has long been seen by international criminal syndicates as ripe for
exploitation.
Now as former ANC guerrillas tire of waiting for their government to
keep its promises, the crime-lords have on tap a desperate and ruthless
source of manpower to do their dirty work.
Over the last few months South Africa has been hit by a spate of
military-style raids on bank vans. More than a dozen guards have been
killed and more than œ10 million stolen.
In the bloodiest hit, which left six guards dead, the attackers cordoned
off a major highway with a spiked chain before ambushing a bank van.
They first sprayed it with armour-piercing bullets then stopped it by
ramming into it with a commandeered 20-ton lorry.
It was a professional job with echoes of the tactics township defence
units used against the police in the apartheid era. Few South Africans were
surprised when Collins Chauke, a former member of the ANC's armed
wing, Umkhonto we Size, was identified as a prime suspect.
The government has claimed that he was an exceptional case. But the
inmates of Devon military camp 60 miles east of Johannesburg tell a very
different story. Left to fester in their brick blockhouses they are simmering
with resentment at the government. They also leave little doubt that many
ex-colleagues are resorting to crime.
"The government promised us heaven and earth and they have not
delivered," said Sipho Mavundla, a 32-year-old veteran of the "liberation"
war who spent four years in exile in Tanzania.
"I can survive on the 600 rands (œ80) a month they pay us. But some
can't. I won't say my comrades are robbing banks, but if you had army
training, no job, and were desperate to feed your family, what would you
do?" On a fire-extinguisher behind him someone had scratched: "This
government is driving us to crime. They force us to rob banks."
A cartoon strip on an adjacent wall rammed home the message. In the
first picture, three soldiers are marching up and down in freshly pressed
uniforms. In the second, a duck labelled the "commissioner" struts around
in a parody of a general out of touch with his men. In the third a man in a
balaclava with an AK-47 on his back is running with a television in his
arms.
Peter Swarahle, a wiry 25-year-old, is the unofficial spokesman for
those in the Devon camp. He joined Umkhonto we Size in the late Eighties
and after the briefest of training fought in his local township,
Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria, against the apartheid security forces.
At the end of the apartheid era in May 1994 he was among thousands
of ANC soldiers who were promised a career in the army or training to
adapt to civilian life. He opted for the latter. But since then he says all he
has done is sleep and eat and collect his 20 rands (œ2.50) a day.
Last month he decided enough was enough. Now he and 11 colleagues
are preparing to sue the government for breach of contract for failing to
prepare them for civilian life. "Most of us have been here for three years
and all we have to show for it is a certificate of a few weeks' training," he
said. "We've written to the government and no one has replied."
Ronnie Kasrils, the deputy minister of defence and a former Umkhonto
we Size leader, told The Telegraph that frustration was not widespread.
The reality, he said, "does not fit the picture of ex-combatants being
thrown out on the streets and becoming highway robbers. If we find there
are former [Umkhonto we Size] members involved in crime it shouldn't
surprise anyone. Every country in the world has seen former policemen and
soldiers finding it hard to return to civilian life".
The British-monitored integration of the old white-led army and black
guerrillas has been widely praised as one of the triumphs of South Africa's
transition. But that is no consolation in Devon and other camps for
demobilised freedom fighters.
"We were helping to set our country free," shouted one man who
would only give his nickname, Triple M. "Now we are bounced around like
a rubber ball. No one ever comes here. People call us criminals. But we
have been forgotten."
